Category: Natural Beauty

Now that Summer is officially here, it’s time to break out the sunscreen!

If you’d like a primer on sunscreen, then the EWG website is a great place to start. Long before I was aware of the greener, cleaner options for beauty products, I found their annual sunscreen guide while searching for alternatives to avobenzene and other synthetic sunscreens. As a result, I’ve been strictly relying on physical sunscreens for several years now. However, since I’ve switched to natural beauty, I realized I needed to find sunscreen options that not only relied on a physical sunscreen as the active ingredient but also minimized other chemicals. Continue reading “7 Sunscreens for Summer”

Often less is more, especially when it comes to skin care products for sensitive skin. For several months I had been using a DIY cleanser with a rosewater base from a recipe in Skin Cleanse by Adina Grigore. (The signed edition of the book is available on the S.W. Basics website.) When I ran out of my last batch of DIY cleanser, I decided to try the S.W. Basics Cleanser as it also has a rosewater base.

During the last six months I’ve been testing out a lot of different hair products in an attempt to find the ones that work best for my hair type – a top layer that is straight, dry, prone to frizz, and refuses to be manipulated by products or styling tools, an undercoat that is thick and naturally curly, and an increasing number of grey strands that prefer to stick straight out/up, screaming for attention. Add to that a sensitive scalp that suffers from bouts of folliculitis. Oh and there is my sensitivity to smell. While I do enjoy many natural fragrances, I am very particular about the note. I don’t care for the scent of rose, jasmine or a lot of the other essential oils that are often included in more natural hair care products.

What sets Pura Vida Body Coconut Coffee Scrub apart from others is the aroma. It actually does smell like freshly ground coffee beans, which speaks to the rawness of the ingredients. This one will really wake you up!

My first undertaking with respect to natural beauty was to revamp my hair products. This was primarily because I was unhappy with the current state of my hair. Although I’ve always had a head full of wavy, textured hair, I had noticed that I was losing quite a bit in the shower and it no longer had the shine that it used. Initially I thought this was due to age, but I now believe that it had more to do with the abuse it suffered through hot irons, blow dryers and the massive amount of chemicals that I was applying to it on a daily basis. I used a lot of hair products – styling cream to straighten, spray for volume, serum for shine, balm for more shine, spray for hold. Having a lot of textured hair meant I needed a lot of help (tools, products) to control it. Or so I thought.